July 18, 2008
Skype indulges my geekery
Somewhere I picked up a habit, in IM conversations, of correcting myself using Perl syntax. (I think perl swiped this from awk or sed but I’m not that old; I learned it from Perl.) To clarify for less geeky people, that means that I would type something like
s/Oriten/Orient/
and expect it to be read as, “Oops, I fat-fingered the spelling of that word, here’s the correct version so you know what I meant.” The more literal interpretation of that syntax is “replace the first string with the second one.”
Imagine my surprise earlier this week when I did exactly this in a Skype IM conversation, and rather than having my little substitution shorthand turn up in the chat window, it actually edited my preceding message and added a little flag saying the message had been edited.
I’ve found myself wishing more than once that I could have shell access to life, instead of being completely limited to this visually-stimulating-but-inefficient audio/visual interface, and for one brief second Skype brought that dream a baby-step closer to reality.
Now Playing: Tellin’ Stories from Tellin’ Stories by The Charlatans
Posted by pjm at 3:12 PM | Comments (1)
July 16, 2008
Vote cat
I put a few recent Iz photos on Flickr the other day. (Monday, Tuesday, whatever.)
This one turns out to have been picked up as a “top photo” on Pet Charts, “the definitive guide to the best pet stuff online.” (Note that this site has a subtle but unmistakable corporate backer.)
Anyway, it’s currently #4 of 5 in “Cats” for today. It’s ultimately meaningless, of course, but if you feel like voting it up, it might bolster the high opinion he already has of himself.
Now Playing: Minor Details by Wichita Stallions
Posted by pjm at 11:06 AM | Comments (1)
July 12, 2008
Putting their money where my mouth is
Back in May, I posted an opinionated little bit about the so-called “economic stimulus checks” we’re being sent by the Federal Government in an effort to jump-start consumer spending and thereby re-start economic growth. Mine arrived in June, when I was busy getting ready to go to Eugene, so I deposited it and promised myself I’d figure out what to do with the money later.
In Eugene, I read Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, which is subtitled, “The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World”. It’s a remarkable book, in that Kidder, who is often nearly invisible in his books, is much more of a character in this one, and he plays us, everyone who reads of the fantastic efforts of Farmer and feels perhaps a little smaller in comparison.
Farmer’s motivation is, perhaps reductively, simply this: people are dying of curable diseases. Not only do they not need to die, but if they weren’t so poor, they might not be vulnerable to these diseases (AIDS, tuberculosis, etc.) in the first place. And finally, they are often poor as a direct result of this country’s foreign policies (e.g. Haiti).
Farmer’s organization, Partners In Health, takes on these public health issues around the world, addressing them primarily because they are addressable—because they don’t view resignation in the face of overwhelming odds an appropriate response—but it also happens that addressing pandemics like multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and AIDS immediately, even in poor communities (or, in the case of MDR TB, in the prisons of Russia) is significantly less expensive than it will be to address them once they break free of those environments and simply start sweeping the world at large.
I can’t hope to find the dedication Farmer has to his cause, but it does make me angry that my government can find $600 to mail to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers to buy more gasoline, and billions upon billions of dollars to fund an unnecessary war in Iraq, but it can’t spare a few million to cure MDR TB in Haiti, or even attempt to address the health needs of its own poorest citizens.
So I’ve taken the $600 the government sent me and forwarded it on to Partners In Health. I think they’ll do better things with it than I would, and certainly they’ll do better than the government has.
Posted by pjm at 10:32 AM | Comments (2)
June 16, 2008
Recipe for disaster
On the bag of brown rice, I noticed a small block of text headed, “Microwave Directions.”
Hoping that might be slightly simpler than the stovetop directions (boil water, add rice, then oscillate between too much heat and no heat until bored or rice is cooked to bottom of pan), I skimmed through. It included the phrase, “Cook 35-45 minutes.”
I’m a little alarmed at the idea of leaving anything in the microwave for a half hour or more.
Posted by pjm at 6:47 PM | Comments (0)
June 5, 2008
Finger status
It’s been more than five weeks since the stitches came out of my finger. As Chris suggested (and it was nice to have that outside information, I’d add) as the scab came off and left a section of scar on the fingertip (about a quarter of that finger’s fingerprint is just gone), the numbness has gone away as well. The scar is quite faint, and the absence of fingerprint texture is more notable than the scar is.
Full feeling hasn’t returned, though; that fingertip is both extra sensitive and somehow under-sensitive. Extra-sensitive in that insignificant things like rummaging in my pocket for keys can be quite painful; in that sense it’s as though the fingertip was blistered. On the other hand, the nerves there aren’t quite synched up enough to be useful for things like feeling texture.
I’ve also become so used to typing with nine fingers that I haven’t tried very hard to put it back in use for that task.
Posted by pjm at 3:55 PM | Comments (2)
May 27, 2008
Return of the Famous Cat
Iz is an illustration on a Houston Chronicle blog entry today. The funny thing, to me, is that the question is about a Mac, and the photo shows Iz on A’s Dell. (There are plenty of photos of him on a Mac in iPhoto, but I suppose the ones which would have been illustrative here never made my Flickr stream.)
Posted by pjm at 8:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2008
Reluctant coffee consumer
One of the strategies I’ve been following to get work done during the time Iz is pestering me for dinner, once a week, has been retreating to one of our local wifi-equipped coffee shops, picking up a beverage, and working there until it’s time to return for kitty-dinner time.
Maybe the second time I did this, I realized that I was ripping through a pretty good quantity of work for the time I was there. Some of this is simply due to a feeling of having people looking over my shoulder, but I’m also playing with the idea that a little of this is also due to a stimulant effect of the beverage.
I’m reluctant to embrace this idea for a few reasons. One is that I usually get the least coffee on the menu, a mocha or vanilla latte, and I’m reluctant to believe that they have that much more caffeine (or sugar—I don’t add any) than my morning tea, which doesn’t appear to have much stimulant effect at all beyond quieting my craving for it.
The bigger one is that I don’t want to become one of those people whose ability to function becomes dependent on the regular application of $4 beverage. (Alcoholism, ounce for ounce, is cheaper.)
Given that I still haven’t developed a tolerance for the beverage in its pure state—my current ideal coffee is still the Japanese iced variety which is closer to coffee-flavored milk than coffee—I guess I don’t have too much to worry about just yet. But the path is there in front of me.
Posted by pjm at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2008
The perils of making assumptions
I got a call from the University last week, wishing to nag me about making a pledge to their capital campaign. I was otherwise occupied and angry about being interrupted, but the twit on the other end of the line was not at all interested in my convenience. He asked if they could send me email. He then read back an email address which they claimed to have on file for me, using an alumni.*.edu subdomain I didn’t know existed at the University and a construction of my name I’m pretty sure they never used.
“You can send all the mail you want to that address,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure I won’t get any of it.” Oh, he asked, what should we use for an address?
At that point I was feeling pretty snooty about it, so I pulled out the alumni.*.edu address for the College.
“Wait, you’re an alumni there? How is that possible?”
I explained that as long as the University offered graduate programs, it was quite likely that many of its alumni would also be alumni of other colleges and universities. He seemed startled by this new revelation.
Noah reported a somewhat less satisfying experience, with the caller “putting him down” for a pledge Noah never mentioned. And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if perhaps it wasn’t the graduate students dragging down the University’s alumni giving rate, but the boneheads the development office has making their calls.
Posted by pjm at 10:14 PM | Comments (2)
May 19, 2008
No hitter
Noah had two extra tickets as of Thursday, so I asked my brother and we made plans for this evening. Section two, row fourteen, up under the upper deck in right field. For all that I like the team, I average somewhat less than one game per year at Fenway, and I thought I should take the opportunity.
After the third inning, when the Sox scored five, and then when Ellsbury stole second and third before Tek drove him home (“I just hit a triple!” said Noah. “But they walked him,” I observed,) Ben said something like, “You know, Lester has a no-hitter going.”
We went for warm beverages at the top of the seventh. The line at the Dunkie’s was absurd. The vendors with hot chocolate were getting ambushed before they could reach the stairs and selling out before they made it up to the seats. When we came back out the game was still on.
When we got off the orange line at Wellington, even after I dropped off Noah and Rachel in Medford and started the drive back, my ears were still ringing with the noise of the place. Actually, now, in a dark house in Amherst, they still are.
I stopped in Gardiner at midnight for something to drink, and when I came out of the convenience store, there was a guy telling the woman filling her car at the pump, “Jon Lester threw a no-hitter tonight.” I fingered the ticket stub in my pocket and thought, tell me about it.
Posted by pjm at 11:52 PM | Comments (2)
May 16, 2008
A better source for the information?
Maybe I’m getting less search engine traffic because it’s easier to find out how to get a parking permit in Medford now? (I’m not sure it is, but both major search engines show the right page at the top of their results, and my best result is third.)
Posted by pjm at 8:04 AM | Comments (0)
And where have you been?
One of the rewarding things about most pets is an increase in the number of creatures who care where you are and what you’re doing. If one of us is home late or otherwise off the routine, or even if we’re just out on a run, Iz frequently stakes out the front door by sitting on his pedestal and gazing through the oversized window to the front porch. Last night, as he waited for A to return from her track meet, I took a long exposure.
Posted by pjm at 7:44 AM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2008
Hardwood
When we first adopted Iz, our apartment had wall-to-wall carpeting. He got used to sticking his spikes out a bit for extra traction on the corners, so when we eventually moved to one with faux-wood flooring, he was constantly skating around corners and crashing into walls.
The current place has honest-to-goodness hardwood floors, and he’s finally adapted, keeping the spikes in when he’s playing hard. As a result, sometimes his little pads actually squeak on the floor, like a basketball player.
Posted by pjm at 7:52 PM | Comments (0)
May 4, 2008
Rebate checks and our national priorities
Friday’s paper included an article about a school group in Northampton organizing a drive to ask residents to donate their “tax rebates” to the city’s schools, which are suffering severe budget shortfalls.
Like the last check we were sent by the federal government—$300 in 2001, which arrived in mid-September and which I proceeded to donate to the Red Cross—this particular handout of cash the government doesn’t really have to spend (aren’t we running a deficit?) makes me feel like someone is trying to buy my approval. It just smells bad to me. The pretense of “economic stimulus” feels pretty pathetic; if everyone who gets a rebate simply uses it to pay their existing credit card bill (not a bad idea, considering our national credit abuse is a major factor in our current economic malaise) it’s not going to do much to jump start the economic engine. To me, it feels like an attempt by our government to avoid responsibility; hush money to keep us from pointing the finger of responsibility their direction.
While many people are adopting the viewpoint that this is “their money” and they’ll use it for themselves, thank you, the idealist in me wants to believe that tax money paid to the Federal Government has always been “our money” and it still is, even if the feds give it back to us.
The National Priorities Project, another Northampton organization, examines how our government spending reflects our national priorities, and shows taxpayers how those priorities may differ from our own priorities. From that point of view, I think it’s possible to see this as an opportunity to spend this tiny fraction of the government’s money in ways that reflect our own priorities and not those imposed upon us.
Some Northampton residents think maintaining their schools is important, so they’re trying to redirect these federal funds there. We could give the money to research into issues touching people we know. We could spend it on photovoltaic panels or personal wind turbines to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. We could find a way to plant more trees in our communities, or subsidize trail maintenance or other open-space initiatives. We could support people at the economic margins.
Or we could simply pay down our personal debt, acknowledging and facing the actions that got us here in the first place.
Either way, I think it’s time to twist the idea of whose money this is. If you don’t like how the government spends “your money”, here’s a chance to show them how you’d prefer to see it spent.
Now Playing: Northwestern Girls by Say Hi
Posted by pjm at 2:44 PM | Comments (0)
April 30, 2008
"A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken"
Jeremy Zawodny links to a Web 2.0 conference presentation by Clay Shirky about what Shirky calls “the cognitive surplus.” It can largely be boiled down to this: that whenever anyone asks, about the massive user-driven online projects (e.g. Wikipedia), “Where do they find the time for all this?” the answer is, generally, “They watch less television.”
Or at least, they see television differently than they used to. (See the title quote, a summary of how at least one anecdotal four-year-old views television.) I seldom, if ever, watch television; I try to keep this to myself, because it’s the sort of statement that makes people accuse you of trying to be superior (or simply acting smug.) I know people who do, but only in the context of other activities, not in the old context of simply sitting and watching. I can’t promise that I’m always doing interesting things with this extra time, though seven or eight hours of running every week may be part of it.
The difference, Shirky explains, is that we’re no longer afraid of what to do with our brain when we’re not working, and we don’t feel the need to hide in passive entertainment. We’re increasingly able to choose how we use that “cognitive surplus”, and when a project like Wikipedia can get a few billion of those brain-hours, it can do impressive (if not necessarily always accurate) things. It’s an interesting theory, and one that may not be provable, but if he’s right, the TV people had better be looking around to figure out where they fit in to this new world.
But don’t take my word for it; take Shirky’s.
Now Playing: The Obscenity Prayer by Rodney Crowell
Posted by pjm at 1:37 PM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2008
Unraveling
The stitches came out this morning. Thanks to the novocaine used in the ER, they hurt more coming out than they did going in.
My finger already feels better with the pressure of the stitches off, though it’s oddly sensitive. It’s tender as you might expect, but the very tip (outside the cut) is numb, as though it’s asleep. The doctor says it may or not ever get sensation back. I’m not too bothered, as long as I can type again soon.
Posted by pjm at 7:52 PM | Comments (1)
April 26, 2008
The finger report
Nicole points out that I haven’t really explained exactly what I did to my finger last week.
The quick summary is: I got a mandolin for my birthday, which for those who don’t know their esoteric kitchen equipment (I only had a vague idea what one was before) is a fancy rack with a blade that lets you slice vegetables easily. However, the nature of them is that you’re holding the vegetable in your hand and pushing down toward a blade, which is always a scary proposition.
And I knew that was dangerous, and yet I still had a moment of frustration and inattention, and paid for it by slicing off a chunk of skin about an eighth of an inch wide and maybe a half-inch long from right smack in the middle of the fingerprint on my right middle finger. (I also nicked the index finger, but that was just a band-aid level injury.) I don’t know how deep it was; not very, but enough to start bleeding quite freely and quite quickly. And it wouldn’t stop.
Fortunately for me, once she knew what was going on, A hit all the right responses. She handed me a roll of bandage (where that came from, I’ll never know) with which I wrapped any fingers with blood on them (most of the hand) enough to slow it down, and reminded me to elevate it. (I spent the next hour with my hand over my head.) She also handed me three ibuprofen and said, swallow these now, you’ll appreciate it later. We sat with it a few minutes waiting for it to stop, but when it became evident that it wasn’t stopping (there’s only so much you can bandage with what’s in the house) we decided I needed professional help.
I kept the thing elevated so long on the drive that it just about fell asleep, but didn’t drip blood on anything in the car. The ER doctor tried more or less the same steps we had, minus some of the guesswork and plus some better tools, but eventually he concluded that the best way to stop the bleeding with any confidence was to stitch it up. This required some anaesthesia to the finger, as well.
Because there wasn’t a whole lot of spare material to stitch together (I was thinking we should’ve used a patch, like you would on the knee of your pants) I’ve had the feeling, ever since, of wearing a glove where the one finger is a size or two too small. More recently, now that the bleeding has stopped for real, I feel like the stitches themselves hurt more than the cut; every time I accidentally bump the fingertip, I get a jolt like a static shock or a bee sting which I think is the stitches pulling. I will be very glad to have them out on Monday.
I’ll be even happier to have that fingertip back in use for typing, which will take a little longer. I can make pretty good speed now with nine fingers (the index finger is pretty much completely healed), but the other four on my right hand aren’t thrilled about all the extra work. I can’t figure out why the ring finger hurt unless it’s just sympathetic pain.
I have successfully chopped vegetables since then, however. But I used a knife and a cutting board like a normal person; that’s a tool I’m used to.
Posted by pjm at 10:49 PM | Comments (3)
April 24, 2008
A long wait for the doctor
One chore for this week was making an appointment to get the stitches removed. I called the office of the GP I used to see before I went to grad school.
It appears, however, that the ripple effect of our state’s universal-coverage law has reached his practice as it has many others. Because I hadn’t been in the office for three years (not quite true; I was there in July of ‘05) they considered me a “new patient.”
“And,” continued the appointments secretary, “our next available appointment for new patients is in January.”
That’s a long time to wait to have stitches removed. They suggested I go back to the emergency room to have them out, but the six-times-higher co-pay for ER visits made that a discouraging prospect. Fortunately, they decided to “take me back,” or I would’ve been calling all over the valley to find someone who could snip a few bits of thread in a hygienic manner for a reasonable price.
Now Playing: National Steel from Failer by Kathleen Edwards
Posted by pjm at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)
April 23, 2008
Iced tea
I have relatively few guidelines for my life, and those I do are more like biases than guidelines. One of them is that I maintain a strong bias in favor of buying beverages from front-lawn lemonade stands. (If I remember to carry cash while running, this bias begins to take the form of a rule.)
Yesterday afternoon, I bought a cup of iced tea from a pair of energetic young women (neither old enough to drive, I think, but one perhaps approaching her teens) who had thoroughly advertised their wares using sidewalk chalk for a hundred feet in either direction. They were closing up for the afternoon but were more than happy to pour me a cup and put a lid on for my walk in to town, not to mention a mint leaf.
It was sweet, slightly chilly, and very, very good. There was ball-point pen notation around the top of the cup telling me I’d done something good today.
They were donating their earnings to (I think) The Smile Train (warning: images meant to raise sympathy ahead), and though they had a little bar graph to show progress toward their funding goal, they had made woefully small progress. I think probably they were hoping to hit thousands and hadn’t made $100 on the iced tea yet.
But it was good, and I think I myself smiled more about it than the price of the beverage purchase might have warranted.
Posted by pjm at 4:37 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2008
The silent stakeholders
I just returned from listening to a politician with a Kenyan father explain why he refused to “go negative” in his campaign. This candidate, however, also had a Kenyan mother, and in his district, a President of African ancestry would be wholly unremarkable.
I donated to Edwin Macharia’s losing campaign for the Kenyan Parliament last year, and tonight he returned to the College to speak about the current state of Kenya. His perspective on that country was clear and interesting, particularly in that he sees a real and non-paternalistic role for Americans in the rebirth of his country.
There is a silent stakeholder in everything we do. When the credit market in the U.S. collapses, there’s a run on banks in Iceland. When the price of gas goes up, the cost of transporting food in Nigeria goes up—perhaps it becomes uneconomical.
And when politicians encourage negativity and violence, they find they must govern a cynical, violent people. When Americans burn coal to power their electric lights, they raise the global temperature and cause food crises in Africa. Macharia pointed out that even though the events of 1994 in Rwanda were the worst in that country’s history, that Rwanda and Burundi have seen mass murder on a 15-20 year cycle for decades—and that that cycle is coming due in the next few years. A food crisis in that district could spark another round of ethnic violence fueled by grudges and resentments harbored since ‘94. There are many who argue that environmental changes driven by global climate change led to the ongoing killings in Darfur. As Macharia noted, just because the Kenyans are (temporarily) no longer killing their neighbors, does not mean there aren’t other countries in flames across Africa.
Happy Earth Day?
Posted by pjm at 10:01 PM | Comments (1)
April 21, 2008
Weekend's work
Minus: Even though the finger generally feels better (a development curiously coinciding almost perfectly with the end of my supply of prescription-grade pain pills) it still hurts to type lots, so I can’t broadcast all the good stuff of this weekend. (I did get one story out yesterday with another coming from today. Pain enforced a somewhat more spare style than usual. I hear that worked for Chekhov, too.)
Plus: Not much time to write, anyway.
Posted by pjm at 9:46 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2008
Tonight's excuse
Sliced off a bit of finger while attempting to make dinner. Abandoned dinner in favor of six stitches in the ER. Typing without a full complement of fingers. Back soon.
Posted by pjm at 10:27 PM | Comments (1)
April 13, 2008
Who dopes, and why
Eddie asked in a comment, why do sprinters and throwers get busted for doping more often than distance runners? Do they dope less, or just get caught less?
I’d say, “both.” First, the payoff from most doping agents is greater in the speed and power events than in the endurance events. This is a fancy way of saying that the limiting factor of how far you can throw a little iron ball is how strong you are, and the limiting factor of how quickly you can cover 100m is how fast you are (both top-end speed and acceleration) and both of those limiting factors can be directly affected by things like anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and/or testosterone. Distance running is limited by so many different factors, from subtleties in physiology to simple matters of how quickly you can transfer oxygen from the air to your muscles, that doping offers fewer clear payoffs.
Second, because of the complications of doping for endurance, it’s harder to detect the performance-enhancing agents. Most of the ones that address endurance directly simply mimic the effects of being well-trained; some athletes use the strength/power agents (steroids) to allow them to train harder and recover faster, arriving at competitions free of the direct signs of doping but carrying the benefits of pharmaceutically-enhanced training. This is why out-of-competition random testing was created, but it probably makes the potential downside (the odds of getting caught) lesser for distance runners.
(The former East German sports complex supposedly used steroids this way, and 1976-1980 marathon gold medalist Waldemar Cierpinski supposedly appears on their doping records. However, the IOC has been less willing to pursue and redistribute the medals won through the wholesale abuse of the G.D.R. than they have been those won by Marion Jones.)
Most of the performance-enhancing substances used by distance runners, such as EPO (on the rise since the ’90s) and blood doping (favored in the ’70s and ’80s) are essentially taking existing biology and making it more so. EPO, for example, is made to treat cancer patients whose red blood cells have been decimated by chemotherapy; in a healthy athlete, it allows the blood to carry more oxygen. Cycling has been plagued by these agents because, oddly enough, the bicycle itself is a leveling agent, a mechanical means to erase the mechanical differences which would make one runner more efficient than another one with the same oxygen-transfer capabilities. There are new blood tests for EPO, but it’s still tough, and the testing is supposedly still lagging behind the alleged abusers.
But I think the first factor is the more important one, because the fact that doping agents aren’t as direct in distance running means that the general state of competition isn’t as distorted by them even if they are used pervasively as it is in the speed and power events (or cycling).
Which brings us to “why.” The classical profile of a doping athlete goes in two bins: the mediocre performer who suddenly breaks through with fantastic performances (e.g. Tim Montgomery,) or the longtime top performer who uses doping to extend their career (e.g. Maurice Greene, allegedly, or Regina Jacobs.)
Laurel points out a relevant Scientific American article (via 3 Quarks) which applies game theory to doping, mostly in cycling. The premise is that as long as they payoff for doping is high and the penalties relatively low, it will be pervasive, but that federations have the power (with some bold steps) to change the game between dirty and clean such that avoiding performance-enhancing substances is the smart choice. This means making the penalties draconian (which requires bulletproof testing, unfortunately) and making it easier for athletes to believe they can compete without doping. (Read the article for a better explanation of these suggestions.) These are things track (and particularly distance running) is doing much better than cycling, but for all the reasons already discussed, the game theory tips much less in favor of the dirty athlete in endurance events.
Now Playing: The Wake-Up Bomb from New Adventures In Hi-Fi by R.E.M.
Posted by pjm at 2:27 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2008
Found money report
Another year, another tin of loose change. The total was slightly down this year.
$7 in folding money this year (a five and two ones). Quarters overtook dimes in overall value, with 31 of them coming to $7.75. Only 68 dimes. 30 nickels; I have no idea why so few nickels turn up. (They’re also generally in better shape; some of the dimes and pennies are in remarkably tough shape.) 388 pennies, five of them barely recognizable as such. Grand total: $26.93. The foreign total is €.10 (actually found in Europe), £.02 (I assume that’s the value of a coin marked “2 New Pence”) and ¥1.
The previous two years’ worth of found money have earned $3.31 in interest since I started counting and depositing them.
Now Playing: Lost A Friend from Whiplash by James
Posted by pjm at 8:38 AM | Comments (1)
April 6, 2008
It helps to define "majority"
Massachusetts had its primaries months ago now, but yesterday the parties held caucuses to determine exactly who the delegates would be. A running-club friend of ours was hoping to be a delegate for my candidate, so I walked over to the College (where the caucus would be held in the old gym) and asserted that yes, I was registered with this party in this congressional district. (I voted in the local elections on Tuesday.)
A process which is obscure to me—I assume it happened at the state committee level—determined that we would select one male and two female delegates. The candidates had two minutes to make their pitch before we voted. After the five men spoke (one of them essentially asking people to vote for one of the others, not him) and we voted, the women spoke while the men’s votes were counted.
We did some quick arithmetic on the men’s tallies and determined that there were 98 people voting, a pretty small number considering the size of the district (and that this caucus was for the top vote-getter in the district in either party). After the four women spoke, we were instructed to write two names on our ballots; in response to questions, it was clarified that we could not vote twice for the same person, we could write just one name if we wished, and if we had two ballots (some people did) they could write one on each ballot.
As the votes were being counted, someone asked for more clarification about the process, and it was announced that any delegate must gain a majority to be selected; if nobody gained a majority, the lowest vote-getter would be taken out of the pool and we’d go again. This sounded fine, but then when the results were announced, they claimed that nobody had a majority. The totals were announced, however, and one of the women had 72 votes. Our friend was second with 46. (N.B. I may be mis-remembering these votes by a few, but I do have them within two or three.)
There were some murmurs, and I raised my hand. The moderator nodded to me, and I said, “It sounds to me like one of the candidates does have a majority. Unless there are over 144 of us voting, 72 should be enough.” At this point the parliamentarian stood up, glared at me, and said, “The candidates need a majority of votes cast,” or something along those lines.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “We were instructed not to vote twice for the same person. Even if we all voted for the same candidate, it would be impossible for anyone to get more than half the votes.”
(In hindsight, it would be possible if enough people only voted for one candidate, but this still doesn’t invalidate my assertion that this is a poor way to vote.)
I’m still not sure the parliamentarian understood the simple arithmetic involved, but he was mollified when someone offered to check the actual rules. The printed rules arrived to a round of applause, and it was determined that, in fact, a majority of voters, not votes, was required. It was still unclear exactly how many people had voted in that first round, but everyone seemed to accept that it wasn’t more than 140, and this candidate (who happened to be a sophomore(!) at the University) was elected to some applause.
Then we set to the second round, where we got one name per ballot, one ballot per voter. If none of the remaining three attained a majority, any candidate with less than 15% of the vote would be taken off the list and we’d do another round. That was, in fact, what happened, and our friend eventually lost on the third ballot, with her numbers declining with every round. (Hopefully not because of the loudmouth sitting behind her.) Her husband was doing the figures on the announced vote totals from the second round, though, and he figured there might have been few enough voters (i.e. fewer than 92) in the first round that her 46 would’ve constituted a majority then. We shrugged at each other, and headed home.
The local campaign is organizing volunteers to car-pool to Pennsylvania in the coming weeks to work for the primary there. I find this amusing both because Pennsylvania didn’t have a primary that meant anything in the five years I lived there, and because they’re actually going to my old area, working out of the Allentown headquarters. I’ll be in Boston that weekend, however.
Now Playing: Over-Ground from Into the West by Pilot Speed
Posted by pjm at 7:41 PM | Comments (2)
April 5, 2008
Pricing as incentive (or, why I still pay some bills by mail)
The online parking ticket payment I just mentioned is a great idea in concept: I sit down at my computer and pay my ticket, sparing me an envelope, a stamp, and whatever time it would take to write a check and mail the envelope.
In practice, it’s not so simple. For one thing, the system just throws errors; I gave up after two attempts to start the process were met by un-helpful error messages indicating some kind of software problem. (Probably it requires me to use IE on Windows, but (a) it doesn’t say so, and (b) even if it does, I won’t.) For another, they’re adding a $3.50 service charge to a $10 ticket.
Given a choice between paying a $10 ticket by mail and a $13.50 ticket online, I’m paying by mail. I’m guessing hundreds of others are making the same decision, and Northampton is probably not seeing mass adoption of their online ticket-paying system. This is disappointing to them, because if we pay the tickets online, they get $10, but if we pay by check, they get $10 minus the cost of opening all the envelopes and making the bank deposits.
But if they want tickets paid online, they should be reducing that service charge. 35% is too high; maybe they should try 10% and see how that does. (I’m betting a $3.50 surcharge doesn’t bother someone paying a $250 traffic fine, though.)
I ran in to the same thing with my taxes. Why should I cough up an extra $11.95 to e-file, when by doing so I’m going to be saving the government a chunk of money? If they want to encourage people to e-file, they need to provide a price incentive to move us that way. Imagine it costs the IRS $5 to handle every paper return, and $1 for every e-file. If they give a $2 discount for e-filers, they still save $2 per return e-filed, and they probably get hundreds more of them. Instead, they charge (or, they provide the service only through contractors who charge) and fewer people e-file.
(It does look like there are free services available, but only for people with adjusted gross income under $54,000. So I could’ve spared myself the agony.)
For an example of companies doing this the right way, see nearly any utility company. Every major electricity, gas, or telecommunications utility I’ve dealt with in the last few years has offered online bill payment for no extra charge. I’ve signed up, we’ve both enjoyed increased convenience, they’ve saved some money, and at least I haven’t paid extra.
If you want people to use the service which saves you money, price it so it saves them money, too.
Update: I sent email to the webmaster to point out that their site was broken. I just got a response: “The problem has been corrected. Please try again.” Um, no.
Now Playing: Попробуй спеть вместе со мной from Группа Крови by Кино
Posted by pjm at 10:08 AM | Comments (2)
Half-step behind
I was in Northampton yesterday to figure out what’s wrong with my left hip. (Diagnosis: I’m very tight in my psoas, piriformis, and a very short muscle with a three-word name and three-letter abbreviation I can’t remember.) Leaving the office, I was told to walk around a bit (like a lap around the block) rather than just sitting right down in my car.
Consequently, I arrived at my car just after the parking ticket was placed under the wiper. I guess I earned this one, since I was 15 or 20 minutes over the time, unlike my last parking ticket, where I was busted for being five minutes over time. Also, at least this time it was a parking meter, so the meter reader didn’t know how long I’d been over time; the previous ticket involved a time-stamped pass, so they knew my pass had only just expired when they ticketed me.
Plus, this is only a $10 ticket, and I can pay it online. It’s as though they’re trying to be punitive as agreeably as possible.
Now Playing: Video from Ben Folds Five by Ben Folds Five
Posted by pjm at 8:58 AM | Comments (2)
March 18, 2008
Five-digit envy
One of my sometime training partners referenced this story in the Glob, which lists the top-25 ZIP codes (inside 95/128, naturally) where “…neighbors are smart, restaurants are plentiful, commuting is easy, and, best of all, home values are still strong.” It’s an interesting list; the predictable tony suburbs are on there, but there are some (e.g. a section of Roxbury, noted for its “marked racial diversity”) which are a little less predictable. (The training partner who pointed this article out lives in a third-floor walkup in Inman Square, which is one of the three Cambridge ZIPs on the list.)
The trick here is that they’re citing all of these ZIPs as having “still strong” home values. And yet… the methodology is to look at prices from 2002 to 2007. I’m guessing this is because there isn’t enough solid data to go very far into 2008, and maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention, but isn’t any actual decline in home values a fairly recent thing? Even if it showed in 2007 numbers, isn’t it likely that nothing has slid all the way back to 2002 yet?
Seems to me that there’s a possibility some of these ZIPs aren’t quite as rock-solid as the Glob wants them to be.
(No, I haven’t looked to see where 01002 would stand in the list.)
Posted by pjm at 8:06 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2008
Yeah, yeah, yeah
I’m not sure what’s been behind the drought this week. I could blame last week’s enforced professional logorrhea, but it seems more likely that every time I have an idea which I feel like writing about, it grows into a thousand-word soliloquy before I have a chance to even start writing, and by that point it looks like more of a time suck than I’m ready to take on, so I don’t write at all.
I need more three-sentence posts.
Posted by pjm at 5:41 PM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2008
Out of time
I wrote four postcards yesterday (checking watch) uh, Thursday, sitting on a warm step in a sunny plaza with no better place to be. I put stamps on, but didn’t get them addressed until that evening.
I’ve spent all of today in the venue (literally from nine to eleven), and expect to do the same tomorrow. I also can’t be sure I’d know the difference between a mailbox and a recycling bin (that would be A Bad Thing). I suppose I’d better leave the cards with reception at the hotel, or I’ll be sending them from an airport.
An airport in Italy, with my luck. If not Logan.
Now Playing: You Don’t Know How It Feels from Wildflowers by Tom Petty
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February 20, 2008
Reminder band
It’s been a few years since everyone in Athens (or who wished they were in Athens) was wearing a $1 yellow rubber wristband with LIVESTRONG printed on it, and the yellow-bracelet fad has pretty much passed. The True Believers are the ones still wearing theirs, and you can get similar bands in nearly any color at the corner convenience store, sometimes as a fundraiser for something, sometimes not.
I’ve come by two in the last six months or so, despite having passed them up for nearly four years. I got an orange one when I registered for the fall foliage walk put on by Amherst’s A Better Chance chapter. (I ran the course in a bit more than two hours.) More recently, I got a purple one from Two Trials which I’ve been wearing nearly every day.
I’m not going to try to explain Two Trials in three sentences or less. Go read the story, and you’ll get the idea. I ran with Emily for a few miles during the 2000 Boston Marathon (that was before she got good, and I figured out that marathons are not for me), and she and her husband have been a real part of the Mid-coast Maine community in recent years. I made my contribution on the first day the site opened, Maddie’s fourth birthday.
The inside of the band has an url from the manufacturer—reminderband.com—and it doesn’t really lend itself to forgetting. It’s loose enough on my wrists that I sometimes wonder if I could get it around both wrists; it doesn’t stuff easily inside the cuffs of my shirts. Having it bumping around in there does remind me periodically to check in and see what kind of progress Emily and Maddie are making. They’re not quite halfway at this point, with two months to the Olympic Trials.
Now Playing: Providence from Acoustic & Intimate by Steve Kilbey
Posted by pjm at 9:54 AM | Comments (0)
February 6, 2008
Paying for those tickets
I suppose the airlines’ struggle to reach (or sustain) profitability this decade has led them to try to squeeze as much direct revenue from their frequent flyer programs as possible. (This is as opposed to the indirect revenue of supposedly motivating travelers to fly more often with them.)
What brings this to mind is the deluge of credit-card offers I’ve been getting tied to my several frequent-flyer memberships. (I have five with some amount of miles in them.) The credit-card companies probably pay the airlines some fee to be allowed to mail to their list; whether it’s a straight-out fee per flyer, or a bounty per member who actually signs up for a card, either way it’s revenue to the airline. I’ve been getting these offers for years, but the frequency of their arrival in my mailbox seems to have increased.
(Yesterday, I even got a solicitation to get an affinity card for US Masters Swimming, but they’re a non-profit, so the “help us generate revenue” pitch can be a good bit more up-front.)
I feel a good bit of cognitive dissonance about this, considering that we’re being hammered with news stories telling us how our borrowing habits have led the country to the brink of recession. (If you haven’t had this connection traced out for you already, ask; I won’t do it right now.) On the one hand, it’s entirely reasonable for a company to say, “Wow, American consumers borrow a lot; is there a way we can make money from this?” But the idea of using a national problem like this for specific gain feels a lot like marketing liquor specifically to alcoholics, and the consumer who signs up for the credit cards is like someone curing a hangover with “the hair of the dog.”
On a more personal level, I’ve never signed up for one of these cards. On one hand, I must look like a great potential customer, because I’ve never defaulted on a loan, but since several years ago I’ve also made a point of never carrying a balance on a card if I can help it, so I seldom pay interest. Also, these cards almost invariably carry an annual fee, and why would I want a credit card with an annual fee when it’s so easy to find ones without?
Now Playing: Lucinda from Glitter In the Gutter by Jesse Malin
Posted by pjm at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)
February 5, 2008
The paralysis of choice
This has certainly been a delicious political season for those who enjoy that sort of thing. I’ve read a lot of impassioned arguments in favor of one candidate or another, but I’ve also read a remarkable number of people saying, “I know this is really important, and I just can’t decide how to vote.”
(I was amused to discover, using the electoral compass, that Ron Paul was third on my ordered list of candidates closest to my personal beliefs, but given that they only recognize six remaining candidates, I suppose that doesn’t mean much.)
I wonder if the rampant undecidedness has much to do with fact that so many states are actually holding primaries while there’s still some contest for both parties’ nominations. This is the first time in my voting lifetime (this will be my fifth presidential election) that I’ve had the opportunity to vote in a primary that meant something. While I think the telescoping of the nomination process is a good thing—I wouldn’t mind seeing a single, national primary on one day—I wish it might be a little closer to the general election. (Maybe a six-week gap, max, between that national primary and the general election?)
And I wonder if the ability to examine candidates critically, rather than in red-party/blue-party duality, has atrophied in some of these electorally-big states like New York and Massachusetts. We’re so used to having candidates delivered to us by the parties—if you’re Red, get behind this guy, Blue, go this way—that we’re not used to considering our positions carefully.
So, I’m all in favor of contested primaries. I expect I’ll still be voting for the politician I dislike least in the end, and I don’t doubt which direction this state’s electoral votes will go in the general election, but somehow the existence of a primary which isn’t pointless makes me feel oddly hopeful.
Now Playing: The Day I Let Glory Steer from This Town Is Wrong by Nerissa & Katryna Nields
Posted by pjm at 2:03 PM | Comments (0)
February 4, 2008
Residential trade-offs
Living in a university town has benefits, without question. The wide array of services aimed at the students and their sometimes-visiting parents far outstrip anything that would arise to serve the residents of the town alone.
The downside—or at least part of it—seems to include a police helicopter cruising the neighborhood around the end of major sporting events, and articles in the newspaper explaining what the town and campus police departments are planning in order to restrain rioting.
Now Playing: Another Day at Bay from Let’s Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later On Tonight by Marah
Posted by pjm at 9:11 AM | Comments (0)
January 31, 2008
Choose your disaster
I left the house at 6 AM yesterday, with plans to catch a train around 8 in New Haven, arriving in Grand Central around 10 for a 10:30 meeting. I stopped at a drive-through ATM on my way through town to pick up some cash, having all of $1 in folding money with me. Put my card in the slot, and with a hum the machine slurped it up…
…and did precisely nothing. Nothing on the screen, no responses to buttons, silence. I pushed buttons at random for a few minutes, then arrived at the conclusion that missing my meeting would have larger consequences than losing my ATM card. So I abandoned it.
I was upset about this for an hour or so, but I changed my mind as I approached Hartford. At the left ramp where people heading south on 91 exit for 84 East, someone in a white sedan appeared to have missed the turn completely. There wasn’t much visible damage to the car, but the crash-protection barrels were in disarray and the car’s airbags appeared to have been triggered. The driver looked like they were on their cell phone, hopefully calling 911.
I decided that, given the alternatives, I was happy with my own misfortune and didn’t want to trade.
(For the record, the bank canceled my card and is sending me a new one.)
Now Playing: When You’re Near Me I Have Difficulty from Drums And Wires by XTC
Posted by pjm at 5:27 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2008
Long team == short list
Bicycling doesn’t manage its Olympic team selection the way track and field does, so the announcement of a “long team” is a phenomena we don’t have. The “long team” is something like a relay pool: it’s the group of athletes that USA Cycling will eventually select its actual Olympians from. A short-list for the Olympic team, I suppose; I guess the comparable track level would be making the Olympic Trials final, but there will be more women in the 1,500m final in Eugene than are on the track cycling long team.
I mention this because one of my former co-workers made the long team. This is particularly exciting because Liz came to pro cycling through Masters competition—that is, she developed her talent in races for people considered too old for peak competition, then stepped back into open racing. This is unusual, to say the least.
Also somewhat ironic: If all the right breaks happen and Liz makes the final team, there will be more former RW employees in Beijing than current ones. If there’s any question that we had a whale of a team there in the late ’90s, this is a pretty strong argument.
Now Playing: The End from Everything Changed by Abra Moore
Posted by pjm at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2008
Looks like you're doing very well
Mention of a mutual acquaintance prompted Coach to tell a story this evening.
Apparently he was invited to a reception at said mutual acquaintance’s house in New York, connected with some big running event. Upon arrival, Coach noticed only one woman in the room. I don’t recall his exact words in describing her, but I gathered that her physical appearance was striking. “Who is she?” he asked the bartender, and learned that apparently she worked for the JogBra company. (I don’t know if that was actually the company name, but I think there was once such a brand.)
Within a minute, of course, Coach wound up being introduced to this woman, and proceeded to do so by saying, “I’m Bill S——, running coach. How do you support yourself?”
He claims that this line wound up in the New York Times, but also told us how she got him back.
Posted by pjm at 10:22 PM | Comments (2)
January 19, 2008
I should stop shoveling that walk
Back on January 3, I got an email from an online retailer assuring me that my order had been sent. I told A to look out for its delivery, then promptly forgot about it.
Yesterday, she reminded me, pointing out that nothing had ever arrived. This morning, I logged on to the delivery company’s website, armed with the tracking number, to find out what was going on.
Acting on the data from that page, I got up and opened the back door (which we never use, due to the danger of a cat-break) to retrieve the package from inside the storm door, where it had been sitting for twelve days.
Now Playing: Don’t Wait That Long from Seven by James
Posted by pjm at 9:38 AM | Comments (0)
January 6, 2008
On elections
In 2007, I did something I’ve never done before: I contributed to a political campaign.
No, I haven’t contributed to the money machine of the American presidential campaign. I gave about $100 (total across two contributions) to the campaign of Edwin Mwangi Macharia, who was running for parliament in Kenya. Macharia, a graduate of the College, wound up finishing third of fourteen candidates in the running for the Kieni constituency, a primarily rural Kenyan constituency north of Nairobi. The incumbent was second.
The Kenyan election has made headlines since, of course, with rioting and charges of corruption sweeping the country. This is not uncommon around the world, of course, and the fact that this is happening in a relatively stable East African country (and one which many Americans have at least some familiarity with, of course, through their highly successful export of distance runners) is partly responsible for the attention being paid. That said, Macharia’s roundup of the election is eye-opening. I’ve added emphasis:
“Heavy negative propaganda by opponents as well as significant sums of monies being given to entice voters took their toll but we refused to respond in kind, remembering that principles are only sentiments until they are applied in the face of pressure. In the final tally we came in 3rd, behind the front runner who garnered a commanding lead, and [the incumbent] who despite spending an incredible amount of money the night before buying voters only managed just over 2000 votes more than we did.”
How on earth do you run a clean, principled campaign in a climate where a significant number of voters expect to be paid for their vote? In a relatively poor nation, how do you convince people to cast their vote for you rather than the guy who offered them money? And how do you expect people to have any faith at all in the results? If anything, I’m amazed that the cynicism that system must breed has left enough voters concerned about the results to round up a respectable riot.
And I’m amazed that half of the eligible American voters don’t bother to show up and vote… and to what degree we take for granted what is, despite two hundred years of more-or-less successful operation, an incredibly fragile system.
Now Playing: Half Life from Spirit Touches Ground by Josh Clayton-Felt
Posted by pjm at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)
December 31, 2007
Warm spot
Am I getting enough work done here? How can I?
Maybe I’ll do better next year? (I suppose it was working that warmed up the laptop for him, after all…)
Now Playing: Injustica from Building 55 by Kathleen Edwards
Posted by pjm at 10:56 PM | Comments (1)
December 27, 2007
Half-decade
It was five years ago today that we went up to Dakin and came home with a sociable little brown tiger with no fear and an outsized appetite for nearly everything. After five years of purring, sleeping in the warm spots, and wheedling for more food, Iz isn’t little anymore, but his attitude of friendly insolence is the same as it was on day one.
Posted by pjm at 6:01 PM | Comments (3)
December 14, 2007
How we treat our neighbors
Around Boston, we like to kid a bit about how in Southie, they’ll slash your tires if you park in a shoveled spot that’s marked with something—a chair, a garbage can, whatever.
The idea behind marking the spots is that the person who did the shoveling should get the benefit. But various municipal officials (mayors, etc.) make noises about having garbage trucks pick up the markers, because parking gets wicked tight when there’s nowhere to throw the snow; you wind up losing one in every three spots (if you’re lucky) just to stack the snow.
It looks like Somerville is a lot closer to Southie than I thought. As I walked up to work around lunchtime, I saw a lot of trash cans and sawhorses marking spots in the street. And I spotted something too large to be a ticket on a car window. Amused, I snapped a shot with the phone:
And then the owner came out. Thomas told me he had lived up the street for ten years, but this was a rental car so his neighbors must not have known it was his. He noted that there should have been room for two cars where he was parked, but that only one spot had been shoveled out. And then, folding the note up, he said, “I’d take a note like this more seriously if it was signed. They don’t sign because they are cowards.”
I can sympathize with wanting to have the spot you shoveled available when you come back, but aren’t anonymous notes a little… I don’t know, passive-aggressive? There’s plenty of street out there, folks, even if you can only park on one side of it right now. Shovel a bit more of it (but hurry, it’s going to set up like concrete tonight.) Pitch in for other people and maybe they’ll let you park in their spot someday. That’s the benefit of sharing, instead of staking out your own little patch and hissing at anyone who comes near.
(And maybe we should all consider fewer cars and more alternatives. I wouldn’t want to take my bike out last night, but today it was fine.)
Now Playing: Never Enough from Show by The Cure
Posted by pjm at 6:47 PM | Comments (3)
December 12, 2007
If all else fails I can get a job as a handyman
WD-40 failed to make keys turn any more easily in the front-door deadbolt, so I removed the blasted thing and replaced it. I suspect this may have been a perfect home-improvement project, as I got to visit the hardware store, employ both WD-40 and a screwdriver, and get my hands greasy to boot, while A was left to explain to our landlord why we now have different keys for the front and side doors—and possibly why we made the repair without checking first. (But the door locks without pliers now.)
Now Playing: A Girl Like You from 11 by The Smithereens
Posted by pjm at 10:13 PM | Comments (1)
December 6, 2007
No more paper newsletters from the IAAF
While I confess some pleasure in the false romance of regular mail from Monaco, I’m pleased to read that the IAAF newsletter will no longer be printed and mailed, but only available online. What’s the point of using all that paper and postage (and packaging, given that the eight-page newsletter was frequently mailed sheathed in plastic, as some magazines are) when most of the enclosed news has been available on the website for weeks by the time the newsletter arrives?
There are places for magazines in this world—I happen to think that airplane seat-pockets are one of them—but a newsletter like this one is really much more useful as an online publication than as paper.
Now Playing: Dear Madam Barnum from Nonsuch by XTC
Posted by pjm at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)
December 4, 2007
Not for the same reasons...
…but it appears that the Mass Highway has decided that overpasses can’t be signboards anymore. They’re citing safety issues, not the “THIS IS LITTERING” counter-sign I saw a few years ago, though. Some sign-posters are claiming not to understand; if the sign is “behind a fence,” they say (I assume this means “attached to the overpass-facing side of a fence, facing the highway”) then Mass Highway told them it would be OK. I’m sympathizing with Mass Highway here: such signs may be less likely to wind up on the highway, but little is stopping them from blowing into cars on the overpass itself. Plus, do we really want to see car dealerships and real estate agents posting their banners on the overpasses?
Now Playing: Criminal from Tidal by Fiona Apple
Posted by pjm at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)
December 3, 2007
Secret message to the guy who pushed me out of my parking spot on Amity Street this afternoon
…thanks. I would’ve been able to rock my ground-clearance-challenged car out of the too-snowy spot eventually, but the extra push probably saved me a few minutes of frustration.
Posted by pjm at 7:20 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2007
The Breadman lets me down
My breadmaker won’t knead. Actually, it will; it does fine with small loads, like my pizza dough. But if I give it a full-sized loaf it quits turning the paddle. I can hear the gears turning inside, but something’s slipping somewhere under the resistance of the dough.
This is frustrating for several reasons. One, I got up this morning planning to put a loaf in and then go out and run; instead, I wasted an hour trying to get the dough to knead, and wound up cutting my run short and buying a loaf of bread at the Foodmaster on the way home. Two, I wind up taking perfectly good and useful ingredients and turning them into a useless lump of not-bread; I’ve done this a few times now, before I figured out how bad the situation was.
Three, I’m frustrated that somewhere, we made a decision to dedicate resources (plastic, metal, electronics, cash) to a very specialized piece of machinery which doesn’t last beyond three years of use. This is a big hunk of appliance; my choices now are to open it up and try to fix it myself (a questionable proposition, but one I’m toying with,) put it on Freecycle looking for someone else to fix it (probably the safest route,) or just throw it out (an idea which makes me cringe: what a waste!) Why couldn’t we make something more durable?
Certainly replacing it with yet another bread machine seems like a bad bet. I really need to retrieve my loaf pan from Amherst and make my bread a more old-fashioned way. (Or make my week’s bread while in Amherst.)
Now Playing: Dan Takes Five from In the Land of Salvation and Sin by The Georgia Satellites
Posted by pjm at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2007
Scheduling the pieces
After the races were over, while the successful athletes were collecting their trophies, a few of us from the media stood in the back and did what we do best: complain. (Writing is second on the list, actually.)
At Nationals, as with every big meet I’ve had experience with, there’s an annual alternation of the race order between men and women. This year, for example, the men’s race was first. However, with live TV this year, the schedule was a little compressed. There was a 50-minute gap between the start of the men’s race and the start of the women’s race, and since the slowest men take about 35 minutes to run 10km, I barely had time after the men’s race to get to the media center and dump photos to A’s laptop before returning to the course to shoot the women’s race.
The meet’s media organization, however, persisted in running post-race interviews with the top three finishers in the men’s race—delayed by the ‘necessity’ of television interviews, of course—immediately after that race, which meant that (a) I and several other reporters missed them entirely, and (b) the women’s race started while the interviews were still underway.
Now it’s hypothetically easy for the athletes to wait through the twenty-plus minutes of the women’s race; they may even prefer the chance for a cool-down. The handicap becomes drug-testing. There’s a time limit between the end of the race and when athletes must report to drug testing, and they need to fit all their media responsibilities in there. For WADA, it’s an hour, but the NCAA drug-testing isn’t run by WADA, and in theory, they could schedule this a bit better.
(N.B. Yes, I’ve been quiet this week. I’ve been too busy to write up the appropriate thoughts when they’ve crossed my mind; I may stay that way for a few weeks, too.)
Posted by pjm at 7:55 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
Just happy to be here
My training, right now, could be best described as irregular. I try to get out six days a week, and I try to do more than an hour when I feel like it, but I don’t if I don’t. I’m plateaued at this particular level, without the time or energy to devote to pushing beyond it; I’m using that energy elsewhere.
The unusual structure comes from the once-a-week training group I’ve been running with for about sixteen months now. I’ve never been a centerpiece here, since I signed up to be A’s rabbit, and lately I’ve been running with either the low-mileage middle-distance women or the 25-year-old with significantly faster PRs. (He’ll spot me eight or ten seconds, then blow by me midway through each repeat.) Most of us are there for the coach, who has a bigger name than any of us and tells some entertaining stories.
Last week, for example, it was just me, the young guy, and Coach. They arrived together—Dan drives Coach, who can’t see well enough to drive after dark—and both of them joined my warmup, which is unusual. He wanted to talk about the Trials the previous weekend, and neither Dan nor I were eager to prod him to start the workout. We wound up running close to an hour with him, more than he’d run in two years, he said, and we didn’t do any workout to speak of.
This weekend, on two of my runs in Amherst, I passed a (relatively) young man who lives in our neighborhood and gets around in a wheelchair. It’s obviously one of these heavy, hard-to-move wheelchairs made by designers who expect people in wheelchairs to be pushed everywhere, but I see him struggling to push himself around the sidewalks while someone else walks beside him. I don’t know what I would say when I go by—is he enjoying the struggle, or is he fighting something? What does he see in me when I go by?—so it’s a good thing nobody really expects me to say anything.
This week, we moved indoors, and I put my spikes back on. Between repeats, I kept tripping as I would catch my feet on the track; it’s a miracle I didn’t go down. Dan and I were both laughing about it by about the third repeat. “Coach,” I said, “I need to get going; I keep tripping over my own feet when I slow down!”
I was grinning when I took off, and I was still grinning halfway around the track. My legs felt good, tired but not burning, I was on my toes and moving pretty well, and I thought, why wouldn’t I be smiling? I’m still able to come out on a Wednesday evening and push myself, apply a little force to the world and get it back through a pair of shoes with teeth. I can run 800m repeats, right on the edge between endurance and speed, even if neither are what they were five years ago. I can move around the world on my own two feet. Why wouldn’t I be happy about that?
Now Playing: The Only One I Know from Some Friendly by The Charlatans
Posted by pjm at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2007
And another weblog
I have another blog now. We recently added tools to Common Kitchen to allow all our users to run blogs on the site, not unlike the journals of last.fm users. Because the site is set up to require sources for recipes, we needed a way for users to list recipes for which they didn’t know the source. The solution we settled on was to create weblogs which would, in essence, provide a source for every recipe posted in them.
I’m not a tenth the cook Audrey is, of course, but I had to post a few things—like the detailed pizza recipe from my pizza—just in the name of testing, of course. I’ll post more when it occurs to me. If you’re interested in sharing your kitchen experience, come on over. Trust me, I’ve set a pretty low bar.
Now Playing: Next to the Last Romantic from The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter by Josh Ritter
Posted by pjm at 9:20 PM | Comments (2)
November 9, 2007
Distracting the audience
I went to the Bruins-Canadiens game at the Garden last night with this lot (and others). I noticed something about the Garden between periods which explains a lot to me about why hockey is definitely the fourth sport in Boston now (and may be on its way to fifth, with the Revs in the MLS Cup yet again.)
The new Garden has a nice, big scoreboard with massive video monitors on all four sides. There’s a ring of narrow video displays around the top and a smaller ring around the bottom. Then, at the front of the balcony, all around the Garden, is a matching ring of video displays, creating a seamless “crawl” around the entire arena, with this glowing, dancing thing in the middle. When the sponsor on those displays changes (or even when the blue beer-logo display fills up with golden beer) the entire color scheme of the area changes.
We’re motion-watching animals. We focus on the biggest, brightest moving thing in our field of vision. And the builders of the Garden deliberately put a lot of bright, moving advertisements in to grab the attention of the captive audience (which, let’s not forget, paid good money to be there.) The advertisements were a constant distraction from the game we’d paid to see. If I hadn’t been making a conscious effort to watch the game on the ice, it would’ve been so easy to watch the video screen on the scoreboard the whole time, including ad after ad after ad. (You’ll notice that I’ve carefully avoided using the name of the bank which is the “naming sponsor” of the Garden.)
At this point, why not stay at home and watch the game on TV? Heck, why watch the game? When you pay attention, the Bruins are pretty pathetic; they pass, as Bostonist said, “like they just met each other yesterday.”
And it’s pretty obvious that the team and Garden management don’t really care if we’re watching, either, as long as they get paid for the ads.
Now Playing: He’s Got An Answer from Wholesale Meats And Fish by Letters To Cleo
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November 7, 2007
Getting the tickets
Nicole linked this BusinessWeek story about Olympic tickets in China.
I clicked the link thinking about the IAAF staff, and how they grumbled about empty seats in the stands during the evening sessions in Osaka, and how the Helsinki fans were so dedicated. And certainly BusinessWeek does a good job with the task at hand, comparing Beijing ticket sales with those in Athens.
But then I drifted back to my first international track meet. Not the ‘99 World Championships, but the 1994 Goodwill Games (remember the Goodwill Games?), which were conveniently held in St. Petersburg, where I happened to be attempting to kick-start my Russian language skills. (I failed, but the trip was still worth it.) I don’t recall what ticket prices were in dollars, nor what they might have cost had I attempted to buy them in the States; I remember that in rubles, they were pretty attainable, at least for those of us who bought our rubles with real dollars.
I went with a small group of fellow students to the Games headquarters on the north side of the Neva to buy tickets. We didn’t have to wait in line very long, but then we filled out forms identifying ourselves and what tickets we wanted. I was the only one interested in track (nearly all of us went to a night of figure skating, a surreal sight in the sweltering summer Piter had that year.) I got two tickets in the “cheap seats,” close to the front but about 20m around the first corner, and took the daughter of the family I was staying with. No problems; the Russians were largely disinterested in the “Games of Good Will” except as a means of attracting tourists, and most of them remained out in the countryside if they possibly could.
When the competition day arrived, we brought cookies and bananas and sandwiches, and saw the women’s 100m and men’s 800m and 10,000m. Maybe there was some pole vaulting going on. Her hero was Irina Privalova, but I think Gail Devers won the 100m. Marc Coogan (I think?) and Ed Eyestone ran the 10,000m for the USA; it was won by a Moroccan, I think, but the Russian was second, and when he came to the finish line I heard the crowd chanting, “Mo - lo - DYETS!” which translates as something close to “Good job!” I hollered “Good job, Ed!” to Eyestone as they walked off the track, and he looked back up at me; some years later, when he was meeting the RW staff and I went on a lunchtime run with him, I reminded him of that, and neither of us were surprised that he remembered the race but not some random guy in the stands who yelled to him afterwards.
A few days later, the women’s 10,000m was on TV, and my host-father and I watched at the kitchen table. I think there was an Ethiopian or Kenyan woman who ran away with the race, but Gwyn Coogan and the Russian entrant dueled to the line for second, and the two of us—who could only barely communicate, given my weak grasp of his language—rose from our seats, yelling at the screen and pounding on the table, and for a few moments we understood each other with perfect clarity.
I think it was probably possible to pick up a few last-minute tickets to the World Championships in Osaka, if you happened to have been in town, but the price probably wouldn’t have been as cheap as those ruble tickets in Petersburg. I wonder if it has ever been possible to get such tickets to the Olympics—at least, in the last twenty or thirty years?
Now Playing: In Between Days from Speed Graphic (EP) by Ben Folds
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November 5, 2007
Call it even?
I may have to bury a longtime grudge.
Every time I’ve moved inside Massachusetts, I’ve had to tangle with the RMV. They’re a wily bunch; they make some things easy (changing address can be done on their website, and they then send you stickers to apply to your license and registration.) Then they make other things really, really tough.
My last two moves were both at the beginning of September, which ran me in to a rough coincidence: I needed to change address with my insurance company and the RMV, plus renew my insurance (at the new address, with a different premium,) and renew my car registration. In both cases, the complications with the insurance company meant that the RMV demanded confirmation that I was actually insured before renewing my registration; I needed to schedule a trek out to Waltham for a stamp from the insurance company. (There must be a more efficient method for doing this. I’ve done it twice now, and it’s tedious, pointless busywork for all involved.)
I managed to jump all the hoops in 2005, but this year things were too hectic, and I didn’t get around to getting the stamp and mailing the registration form until last week, when a policeman asked me to move the car due to construction on the street and noted, “By the way, your registration has expired.”
So I got the stamp that day, and got the registration in the mail. Deed done, no problem.
Today, on my way back to Somerville, a town policeman followed me for a way—just pulled up behind me, I think, but then he must have noticed that I didn’t have up-to-date stickers on my plates. (I’ve occasionally gone a few weeks between getting the stickers and getting them on the plates, also not a good practice.) So he blinked his lights, and I pulled over and provided license and (gulp) registration. “This has expired,” he said. I explained that the check, so to speak, was in the mail. He was unimpressed.
But then he came back from the cruiser and gave me back the papers and nothing else a warning. Turns out the RMV backed me up; my renewal was already in the system, and all I was guilty of was not being able to prove that my registration was valid.
So I suppose I can’t grumble so much about the hoops I had to jump through to keep it so.
Now Playing: The Disillusionist from Priest = Aura by The Church
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October 29, 2007
Only in New England...
…can we be cranky about winning, for pity’s sake.
Eric Wilbur’s sports blog entry in the Globe is worth reading because it has some cute images—waking up his three-week-old son to watch the Sox win the World Series—but his central point, that Red Sox Nation is top-heavy with dilettantes who don’t understand what it means to be frustrated for decades, is a little too wrong-headed for me to get along with.
Sure, the Sox have plenty of new fans since ‘04, but what did ‘05 and ‘06 do to bring them in? Sure, plenty of old-school fans get annoyed about pink or green Red Sox hats “that allow them to better match with their evening apparel.” (Not me, by the way. I wouldn’t go there myself, but if my nieces want pink Sox hats, let ‘em have ‘em. Doesn’t change the way I feel about the team.)
The problem isn’t “Johnny-come-lately fans,” as Wilbur implies. The problem, if there is one, is this curious belief that there’s a “right way” to be a fan, and if not everyone does it right, it somehow devalues everyone’s appreciation of the game. Does that sound ridiculous to you? If I may risk being a little too heavy, that’s like saying that there’s only one “right way” to be religious, and anyone who does it differently is devaluing the faith of those who do.
Especially in New England, a part of the country which has long been fond of the idea that one’s relationship with God was a private matter not for public display, this dogmatic intolerance in the Church of Baseball smells ugly to me.
And wishing all these “new fans” could wait 86 years for a World Series victory, so they too could have “a lifetime of emotion in the waiting,” as Wilbur says, is just sadistic. Should we now require all new baseball fans to serve apprenticeships as Cubs fans?
Now Playing: Crashin’ In from The Charlatans by The Charlatans
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